Remember Star Wars Galaxies?

That’s rhetorical. It was shut down December 15th of last year after an eight year lifespan with a dedicated fanbase. This only happened because LucasArts didn’t want to renew the licensing agreement for SWG when The Old Republic was coming out. They didn’t want to see two Star Wars MMOs competing for the same group of players. Some would call that smart business, others would call it a knife through the heart.

SWG was the kind of MMO you could really get invested in and attached to because it was about community rather than just gear, pvp rank and raids. Completely replacing it with TOR is like completely replacing World of Warcraft with… well, TOR.

TOR is certainly not a replacement for SWG considering the two games play entirely differently and cater to different kinds of MMO players, meaning they wouldn’t have competed much at all. Then again, who could possibly drill that fact into the heads of dim-witted LucasArts executives? Galaxies was a classic game with depth, unlimited possibilities and a focus on community, while TOR is essentially just modern WoW with Star Wars reskinned onto it.

Luckily, if you hated TOR and want to play SWG again, you still have options.

SWGEmu is a version of SWG emulating the game prior to the CU and NGE updates (that many fans claim ruined the game for the most part.) It just entered its alpha stage of development, meaning there likely won’t be frequent test server wipes like there has been regularly until now.

The craziest part about this is that the code this emulator uses is written entirely from scratch; built to mimic the original gameplay with near flawless accuracy (now that’s fan dedication). These devs are literally just making the game again, and that is certainly not an easy feat. That also means this is 100% legal for them to create (in addition to the fact that the developers actually met with SOE concerning this years ago and they clearly haven’t been tanked so far) so these servers won’t be shut down by a cease and desist order from LucasSharts or SOE any time soon.

So will this be just as good as vanilla SWG by the time it’s out of alpha and beta? Who knows, but it’s the best shot you have at playing SWG again if you really can’t live without it.

You can find a thorough guide on how to install and play SWGEmu here (it requires you own an original copy of SWG) and you can keep yourself updated on SWGEmu news on their subreddit and website.

Jesse Leigh (199 Posts)

If you want a GOTY award, it's as simple as parkour + augments + Turok style dinosaur hunting.

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